Editor's Note

By Jim O'Quinn

These are a few of my favorite things: actors; ideas; good people.

From the vantage of the editor’s chair, it’s especially gratifying when a virtual compendium of your favorite things comes together under a single cover of your publication. That’s the case with this month’s American Theatre, which offers some ingenious, inspiring and illuminatingly specific takes on the three very general categories above. Let me enumerate.

Actors: Research indicates that nearly 40 percent of American Theatre’s subscribership is made up of actors and aspiring actors, and coverage of acting—whether in the form of career profiles, essays about the craft, examinations of actor-training methods or critical responses to great performances—has always scored at the top of reader-value surveys (second only to the inclusion of complete playscripts). I take that to mean that lots of readers are like me: fascinated—irredeemably infatuated is more like it, in my case—by the mysterious chemistry that happens between a great actor and an audience. That fascination shines through each of the deft mini-profiles in our special section “Actors with Roots.”

Ideas: What a dandy one we had several Octobers ago, when we began a top-of-the-season survey to discover what theatre folk of various stripes were looking forward to in the year ahead. This issue’s survey, which wends its way through more than 50 pages of 2006-07 Season Preview listings, is keyed to TCG’s Free Night of Theater initiative, but carries the same double revelation as usual: While we gain an insider’s perspective on the season’s richest possibilities, we get a simultaneous glimpse into the taste and current preoccupations of several dozen working colleagues from around the country.

Good people: There are few accomplishments in journalism more satisfying than giving credit where credit is due, which brings us to this month’s lead feature, a remarkable interview with one of the American theatre’s most remarkable men. American Theatre has had an attentive eye on the career of Bill Rauch since he helped launch the peripatetic Cornerstone Theater Company some 20 years ago, but not until this month have we zeroed in on Rauch himself as artist, thinker and theatrical innovator. Shining through his conversation with arts reporter Rob Kendt—conducted just as the announcement was made of Rauch’s appointment as artistic director of the flagship Oregon Shakespeare Festival—is the honesty, bold idealism and clarity of purpose that has made Rauch one of the most admired (as well as unexpectedly influential) figures in contemporary theatre.

Here’s hoping this issue will be one of your favorite things, too.